FOR THE COMMON GOODRedirecting the Economy Toward Community,the Environment,
and a
Sustainable Future
By Herman Daly and John Cobb Jr.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, 492 pages

When For the Common Good appeared
in 1989, reviews were decidedly mixed. New Options called it
the best political book of the year and "an endlessly provocative
tour-de-force." Newsday called it "refreshing and provocative." But
the book was scorned by academics. The scholarly reviews were full of
foul adjectives like "ponderous" and "inconclusive." One
reviewer even called it "dangerous." Many academic journals
simply ignored it.

The varied response to the book seems fitting considering what Herman
Daly and John Cobb set out to do here. Their
main goal is to deconstruct neoclassical economic
theory and set forth a more holistic model that
more fully accounts for the individual, the community,
and the natural world. Since the book is aimed
chiefly at economists, it achieves this through
very detailed and closely reasoned arguments. It makes for tough but
very rewarding reading.

In the first half of the book, Daly and Cobb discuss the implicit
assumptions and theoretical fallacies governing contemporary economic
scholarship; in the second half, they discuss numerous policy changes
toward their economic goal of a society based on community and ecological
balance. The book also includes an appendix where they construct
an "Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare" intended to
supplant Gross National Product as a measure of economic well-being.

According to Daly and Cobb, contemporary economic theory holds
to a crude, mechanistic worldview of homo economicus as an
autonomous individual driven solely by self-interest and of society
as an aggregate of such individuals. This view tends to equate gains
in society as a whole with the increases in goods and services acquired
by its individual members, but it says nothing about the changes
in the quality of the relationships that constitute that society.
They therefore propose a "paradigm shift" from economics
conceived as "crematistics" (maximization of short-term
monetary gain) to the sort of economics Aristotle called "oikonomia" (management
of a household aimed at increasing its use value over the long run
for the community). In "economics for community," their
term for the latter alternative, there is no aim for unlimited accumulation
or "growthmania." Instead, "true wealth is limited
by the satisfaction of the concrete need." Such a conversion
entails a departure from radical individualism to the notion of a "person-in-community," as
well as a fundamental shift away "from cosmopolitanism to communities
of communities."

In a wide-ranging survey of contemporary economic policies, Daly
and Cobb cover international trade, population,
land use, agriculture, industry, labor, taxation
and income, and national security. Their
chief argument throughout concerns the need for realigning government
and social structures toward smaller social and economic units. In
their discussion of free trade and the international marketplace,
for instance, they argue that it becomes difficult, if not impossible,
for governments to perform their essential non-market functions when
economic power is centralized at the global level, while political
power is decentralized to national and local levels. For the system
to function in the interests of community, economic and political
power must be in balance at any given system level. While this appears
to leave only two choices — either
to centralize power in a global government
or to decentralize the economy and make economic actors more accountable
at the national and sub national levels — Daly and Cobb claim that
it is not an either/or choice. The emerging global society must develop
democratically controlled institutions at all levels: international,
national, and local. It also needs to create a decentralizing context
for economic activities that returns institutional control to people,
roots economic interests in local soil, and reestablishes some sense
of human community.

Daly and Cobb are somewhat tentative in discussing how their programs
may be put into practice. They suggest five activities which could
be undertaken now, leading to an overall policy shift: 1) significant
university reforms; 2) local community-building; and steps toward
3) a relatively self-sufficient national economy; 4) bringing the
question of scale into public consciousness; and 5) changing the
way we measure economic success. In general, they concede, the first
step in any serious change will have to involve education and consciousness-raising.
The all-important notions of scale and sustainability need to be
deeply rooted in public awareness. The dangers of free trade dogma
and the fallacies of measuring economic welfare according to GNP
will also have to be made evident, they observe. Above all, steps
need to be taken toward envisioning a future built on the principles
of community, harmony with the environment, and indefinite economic
sustainability.

What is most impressive about For the Common Good is the
way Daly and Cobb give "a compelling theoretical edge to the
tenets of environmental faith," in the words of the Utne Reader.
The magazine listed Herman Daly among their "100 visionaries" for
his "careful," "lucid" and "compelling" work
in economics. While Daly has developed quite a following as a "green" economist,
I think it's well-deserved, and this book proves it. Cobb, who is
the lesser known of the two (and a theologian rather than an economist),
has also generated a bit of attention around what he calls "economism" (see,
for instance, Timeline,
November/December 1995 and September/October 1996).

Together with books like Hazel Henderson's Paradigms
in Progress and Elinor Ostrom's Governing
the Commons, this book is pointing the way toward a new kind
of economics for the 21st century, an economics in service to community,
the environment, and future generations.